The End of History by Tom Sastry
By Wasafiri Editor on January 7, 2020 in Poetry
They said history was over. I wanted them
to be wrong. I wanted things to turn.
I wanted a world I could find
beautiful on its own, without any
particular good news. I’d never had
a truth that could hold me. So I was glad
when the rage came back, glamorous as nails
bending railings and spitting glass with its
same old ideas. I thought the bombs were love
gone rogue, someone’s attempt to shock hope
into life. It worked of course. Hope is back,
pitiless as ever, waging war on lack.
Tom Sastry is a poet of British and Indian descent based in Bristol. His pamphlet, Complicity, was a Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice and a Poetry School Book of the Year. His first full collection of poems, A Man’s House Catches Fire, was recently published by Nine Arches Press.
Read another poem by Tom Sastry – ‘3 The Contract Cleaners Prepare Flat 64 for the Next Tenant’ – in Wasafiri 105, which you can purchase here.
